This machine illustrates the incessant battle between the great and the goofy at Chevrolet. The 32-valve V-8 is nothing short of heroic, an engine to be reckoned with anywhere. And all the time you're driving it, you have to look at a glowing warning on the dash's message panel that says "Full Engine Power" Oh, you could kill the warning by switching off half the injectors (just turn the power key back to "Normal"), but who's going to pay nearly $20,000 extra for the ZR-1 op­tion and then wean it?

The Corvette bursts with confused de­tails: an instrument panel of contrived gauges in low-contrast orange on gray, adjustable-everything seats with so many buttons that you can never quite find comfort, a fancy black ratchet for remov­ing the bolts holding on the roof when the roof really shouldn't be a bolt-on in the first place. This car is a rolling embarrassment to America until you stand on the gas.

And then . . . Get out of the way, Lin­guine Breath, Yankee Doodle coming through! Make no mistake: horsepower covers for a lot of sins.

Actually, the ZR-1's engine is not all wonderfulness. It starts hesitantly, a sur­prise in this day of electronic controls, and it broadcasts rude resonances at the low revs that are common when cruising in sixth gear.

At the same time, the car around the engine is not all bad. The air conditioner works great; both the Tour and the Sport positions on the electric shocks pro­duced a reasonable ride on any road we found; and the seventeen-inch Goodyear Eagle ZRs stick to the pavement like ep­oxy. You can pull some g's in this car. You have to get used to hair-trigger steering response on the turn in, but once you've made friends with that you can use a high percent of the tires' capability.

This is a car that produces great num­bers on the test track, and yet, when the day is done and the beer mugs are mak­ing rings on the bar, we always find our­selves saying, "If only . . . " If only it didn't rattle and creak so much. If only the instrument panel weren't so gauche. If only Chevrolet would get serious.

The Corvette is a love-hate kind of car, and the ZR-1 just makes it more so.

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